Supporting teachers to enact integrative practical activities in China

This study aims at designing and evaluating a professional development arrangement to support teachers' enactment of IPA. Exemplary curriculum materials were considered an essential part of the professional development arrangement. The following research question and sub-questions formed the basis of the research: What are characteristics of a teacher professional development arrangement, in which curriculum materials are embedded that adequately support teachers in the enactment of IPA

Design and Analysis of Booms for Wheeled Mobile Platform for Crop Phenotyping

Crop phenotyping is frequently used by breeders and crop scientists to monitor the growth of plants and to relate them to genotypes of plants. Seemingly, this contributes to better crop growth and results in higher yield in solving food insecurity from growing world population. Instead of traditional crop monitoring, which is labor intensive, high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) using ground-based vehicle has several advantages over manual methods. Equipped with advanced sensors, the high-throughput phenotyping platforms quickly, accurately, and automatically, measure and record plant traits, such as appearance, height, and temperature. Although there have been many studies on plant phenotyping, there is still needs for ground-based HTP platform to perform accurate phenotyping on targeted crops (e.g. canola and wheat). Previous studies using ground-based HTP platforms focus primarily on leafy plants rather than densely cultivated crops. Besides, the previous platforms are designed for specific vehicles or sensors, and they are inappropriate for canola or wheat, which are targeted crops of this study. In this research, the main objective is to develop appropriate mechanical structures that are attached to different wheeled mobile platforms for HTP study. Using sensors attached to these mechanical booms, data are collected automatically for several traits such as height, temperature, greenness, and photos. These collected data are compared with manual measured data to evaluate the performance of the system, including suitability of mechanical structure. Three generations of the HTP platform are developed. The 1st and 2nd generation booms with simple structures use C-channel as the key component. While developing these booms, the stress, deformation, and vibration, are assessed with the finite element analysis (FEA). Meanwhile, it is necessary to understand the actual vibration pattern of these relatively long cantilever beams when attached to moving vehicles; however, previous research have little or limited investigation on vibrations influence on long booms in a farm setting. Thus, part of this research investigates how different factors, such as vehicle selection, vehicle speed, sensor locations, and road conditions, influence the boom attached to a farm machine, its vibration, and its effects on sensors performance for phenotyping. Then, an ideal operating conditions for HTP were obtained. The measurements from sensors confirm that the proposed mechanical structures and their ideal operating conditions are fulfilling the requirements for accurate sensor measurements. Finally, the 3rd generation boom/robotic arm featured of a hybrid structure is proposed and analyzed for its kinematics and dynamics suitability. Through the calculation and simulation, it shows that this robotic arm meets the requirements, including long-reach and high-payload capability, while maintaining a lightweight and relatively compact size after folding. Moreover, comparing results from path planning routines between Newton-Euler iterative method and simulations, it illustrates that they correlate well

Existence of Solutions to a Class of Kazdan-Warner Equations on Finite Graphs

Let $G=(V, E)$ be a connected finite graph, $h$ be a positive function on $V$ and $\lambda _{1}(V)$ be the first non-zero eigenvalue of $-\Delta$. For any given finite measure $\mu$ on $V$, define functionals \begin{eqnarray*} J_{ \beta }(u)&=&\frac{1}{2}\int_{V}|\nabla u|^{2}d \mu -\beta \log\int_{V}he^{u}d \mu, J_{ \alpha ,\beta }(u)&=&\frac{1}{2}\int_{V}\left(|\nabla u|^{2}- \alpha u^{2}\right) d \mu -\beta \log\int_{V}he^{u}d \mu \end{eqnarray*} on the functional space $${\bf H}= \left\{ u\in{\bf W}^{1,2}(V) \Bigg| \int_{V}u\!\ d\mu =0 \right\}.$$ For any $\beta \in \mathbb{R}$, we show that $J_{ \beta }(u)$ has a minimizer $u\in{\bf H}$, and then, based on variational principle, the Kazdan-Warner equation $$\Delta u=-\frac{\beta he^{u}}{\displaystyle{\int_{V}he^{u}d \mu }}+\frac{\beta }{\text{Vol}(V)}$$ has a solution in ${\bf H}$. If $\alpha < \lambda _{1}(V)$, then for any $\beta \in \mathbb{R} , J_{ \alpha ,\beta }(u)$ has a minimizer in ${\bf H}$, thus the Kazdan-Warner equation $$\Delta u+\alpha\!\ u=-\frac{\beta he^{u}}{\displaystyle{\int_{V}he^{u}d \mu }}+\frac{\beta }{\text{Vol}(V)}$$ has a solution in ${\bf H}$. If $\alpha > \lambda _{1}(V)$, then for any $\beta \in \mathbb{R}$, $\displaystyle{\inf_{u\in{\bf H}} J_{ \alpha ,\beta }(u) =- \infty}$. When $\alpha=\lambda_{1}(V)$, the situation becomes complicated: if $\beta=0$, the corresponding equation is $-\Delta u=\lambda_{1}(V)u$ which has a solution in ${\bf H}$ obviously; if $\beta>0$, then $\displaystyle{\inf_{u\in {\bf H}} J_{\alpha,\beta }(u) =- \infty}$; if $\beta<0$, $J_{ \alpha ,\beta }(u)$ has a minimizer in some subspace of ${\bf H}$. Moreover, we consider the same problem where higher eigenvalues are involved

Numerical investigation of multi-nozzle ejector device with inclined nozzles for marine gas turbine

The high-temperature exhaust gases and the hot surfaces of the ejector device in marine gas turbines generate significant levels of infrared radiation. An appropriate nozzle structure can effectively lower the exhaust gas temperature and reduce the high-temperature radiation surface area, thereby minimizing external infrared radiation. In this study, a numerical simulation of the nozzle structure in the ejector device was conducted using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. By investigating the orthogonal combinations of nozzle inclination angles and the number of nozzles, the temperature distribution and flow characteristics under different operating conditions were analysed. The results showed that as the nozzle inclination angle increased, the entrainment coefficient (Ce) and the temperature ratio at the inlet and outlet (Rt) initially improved but then worsened. Simultaneously, the pressure loss coefficient (Cpl) increased with the inclination angle. The CRITIC weight method was employed to objectively allocate weights to Rt, Ce, and Cpl, determining the optimal solution. The results indicated that Rt and Cpl had significant and similar weights. The optimal solution was found in Case 10 (α = 5°, x = 4), with corresponding evaluation indices of Ce=2.38, Cpl=11.45, and =0.68. This study\u27s findings are of great importance for enhancing the performance of marine gas turbines and reducing external infrared radiation

GeodesicEmbedding (GE): a high-dimensional embedding approach for fast geodesic distance queries

In this paper, we develop a novel method for fast geodesic distance queries. The key idea is to embed the mesh into a high-dimensional space, such that the Euclidean distance in the high-dimensional space can induce the geodesic distance in the original manifold surface. However, directly solving the high-dimensional embedding problem is not feasible due to the large number of variables and the fact that the embedding problem is highly nonlinear. We overcome the challenges with two novel ideas. First, instead of taking all vertices as variables, we embed only the saddle vertices, which greatly reduces the problem complexity. We then compute a local embedding for each non-saddle vertex. Second, to reduce the large approximation error resulting from the purely Euclidean embedding, we propose a cascaded optimization approach that repeatedly introduces additional embedding coordinates with a non-Euclidean function to reduce the approximation residual. Using the precomputation data, our approach can determine the geodesic distance between any two vertices in near-constant time. Computational testing results show that our method is more desirable than previous geodesic distance queries methods

Simvastatin Reduces Neutrophils Infiltration Into Brain Parenchyma After Intracerebral Hemorrhage via Regulating Peripheral Neutrophils Apoptosis

Statins, known for their lipid-lowering effects, also have immunomodulatory properties. This study aims to examine whether systematic simvastatin administration could decrease polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs) infiltration into brain tissue, as well as alleviate neuroinflammation in a rat model of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). The ICH model was induced in adult male Sprague–Dawley rats by an injection of autologous blood. Animals randomly received simvastatin (i.p. 2 mg/kg) or vehicle daily from 5 days before ICH until sacrificed. Routine blood counts, brain water content, neurological scoring, immunofluorescence and RT-PCR were conducted to evaluate the anti-inflammatory effect of simvastatin following ICH. Furthermore, flow cytometric and western blotting analysis were implemented for elucidating the mechanisms involved in simvastatin-induced reduction of neutrophil brain-invading. Elevated PMNs count and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in circulation were detected in rat model of ICH, which was reversed by using simvastatin. Simvastatin effectively alleviated PMNs infiltration and proinflammatory factors release in perihematomal area, as well as attenuated ICH-induced brain edema and neurological deficits. Simvastatin significantly downregulated the expression of antiapoptotic protein-Mcl-1 while increased the level of proapoptotic protein-Bax and cleaved caspase 3 in PMNs. Simvastatin treatment significantly alleviated PMNs brain-infiltrating and subsequent neuroinflammatory reaction after ICH, in part by accelerating peripheral PMNs apoptosis through disorganized the expression of apoptotic related proteins. Our data provided new evidence for simvastatin application on patients with ICH

The Influence of Self-Relevance and Cultural Values on Moral Orientation

Moral orientation refers to moral values that have a consistent guiding orientation toward an individual's moral cognition and behavior. Gilligan (1982) proposed that individuals have two moral orientations, namely “justice” and “care.” In the current study, we investigated the influence of self-relevance and cultural values on justice and care by using Single Attribute Implicit Association Test (SA-IAT). In Experiments 1 and 2, we adopted cultural icon prime paradigm to examine the effects of different self-referential stimuli (self, friend, and stranger) on implicit moral justice and care orientation under two cultural value conditions: traditionality, modernity, and neutral cultural values. Participants exhibited more difference toward different self-referential stimuli in the traditionality condition than in the modernity condition; the priming of traditional culture aggravated the differential order, whereas the priming of modernity weakened the differential order regarding implicitly just moral orientation. In the implicit care orientation, participants in the modern culture group exhibited the least difference to different self-referential stimuli compared with the other two groups, and the traditional group and the control group did not differ significantly. These findings indicate that psychological modernity weakens the degree of self-related effect in implicit justice and care orientation, whereas traditional culture aggravates the differential order in justice orientation. The current studies provide empirical support for theories relating moral orientation, also informing the literature on the role of self-relevance information and cultural values in moral decision making

Risk of head and neck cancer in relation to blood inflammatory biomarkers in the Swedish AMORIS cohort

BackgroundInflammation is critically involved in the development of human cancer, and blood inflammatory biomarkers have been proposed to indicate the risk of different cancer types.MethodsUsing the Swedish Apolipoprotein-Related Mortality Risk (AMORIS) Cohort (N=812,073), we first performed a time-to-event analysis to evaluate the association of the baseline level of 12 blood inflammatory biomarkers measured during 1985-1996 with the subsequent risk of head and neck cancer (HNC) identified through the nationwide Swedish Cancer Register until end of 2020. A nested case-control study was further conducted to demonstrate the longitudinal trends of the studied biomarkers during the 30-year period prior to diagnosis of HNC.ResultsIn the time-to-event analysis, we identified a total of 2,510 newly diagnosed HNC cases. There was an increased risk of HNC per standard deviation (SD) increase of haptoglobin (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.25; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.21-1.30), leukocytes (HR: 1.22; 95%CI: 1.17-1.28), sedimentation rate (HR: 1.17; 95%CI: 1.07-1.29), and monocytes (HR: 1.34; 95%CI: 1.07-1.68) at baseline, after adjustment for age, sex, fasting status, occupational status, and country of birth. In contrast, there was a decreased risk of HNC per SD increase of lymphocytes in % (HR: 0.85; 95%CI: 0.73-0.99) and lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR) (HR: 0.81; 95%CI: 0.69-0.95) at baseline. In the nested case-control study using repeatedly measured biomarker levels, we found that individuals with HNC had consistently higher levels of haptoglobin, leukocytes, sedimentation rate, and monocytes, as well as consistently lower levels of lymphocytes in % and LMR, during the 30-year period prior to diagnosis, compared to controls.ConclusionBased on a cohort of more than half a million participants with up to 35 years of follow-up, our findings provide solid evidence supporting the presence of alterations in blood inflammatory biomarkers during the decades before diagnosis of HNC